Alumni Highlight: Autry Parker Brantley (555 hits)

Autry Parker Brantley embarks on his second season as director of global scouting for the Back-to-Back (2014 and 2015) champion Windsor Express of the National Basketball League of Canada. In that position, Brantley navigates the scouting endeavors for the Express’ basketball operations department, which is a crucial role in team building for the franchise. The Quintessence V member is often scouring the Americas for highly qualified candidates via 10–16 games and practices per week, contextualizing raw statistics and the hype of student-athletes foreign to Canada and veteran free agents playing globally. His efforts facilitate the Express’ international brand awareness and talent acquisition processes, which include leadership over the college scouting department.

At the helm of the team's scouting efforts, Brantley identifies draft-eligible players and orchestrates travel schedules for the scouting staff to visit, further evaluate, and recruit the highly talented. In addition to those operational duties, he maintains a rigorous scouting schedule himself, serving as an international university talent agent to prepare the Express’ early career candidate pool, which includes educating men’s basketball student-athletes and coaches about the opportunity for draft-eligible players to play in Canada, vetting backgrounds, and initiating pre-contract negotiations to ensure that well-informed decisions can be made by management and ownership. During the off-season, Brantley instructs drills during the team’s workouts and combines to assess candidates’ aptitude and fitness, which allows the brain trust to take a closer look at potential prospects in preparation for the NBLC Draft Combine.

Before his promotion, Brantley served as the Express' director of international and college scouting from 2016–21. He initially joined the organization in late 2015, spending one season as a part-time scout. In the fall of 2016, he was promoted to director of college scouting, where he wrote scouting reports in addition to his local scouting duties. He finished the 2016–17 season as the director of international and college scouting, working internationally to filter solicitations from agents and developing a database that organized the scouting information gleaned about professional and amateur players. He was promoted to director of global scouting for the 2021–22 season, responsible for all scouting operations, including the professional, collegiate, and scholastic scouting departments. Before joining the Express in late 2015, he worked for University of Maryland Head Men’s Basketball Coach Mark Turgeon as a summer assistant. He culminated his time with the University System of Maryland, leaving the DMV area to protect and support his mother, who was battling breast cancer in Detroit, MI. Under the advice of his mentor, former Fisk University player and University of Tennessee interim head coach Tony Jones, he joined the Windsor Express to sustain his résumé.

While in the DMV area with the intent to earn a Ph.D. and commitment to serve students of historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), Brantley consulted the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) men’s basketball head coach on roster management, in addition to his total person student-athlete development duties. Under Bobby Collins’ "WIN TODAY" motto, his efforts transformed the inherited team members’ passive culture into the 2014-15 roster, which won 35% more games and produced the best win-loss record in UMES school history, with significant wins against A-10 conference schools Duquesne, St. Bonaventure, and Fordham. His most notable contributions were convincing the coaching staff that Ishaq Pitt, a previous power forward, should be the starting point guard, and motivating the team to post a perfect 100% NCAA graduation success rate (GSR), which ranked first among NCAA Division I member institutions. Ryan Andino was named MEAC Rookie of the Year, Mike Myers was named Riley Wallace National Player of the Year and was a finalist for several NCAA mid-major awards; and Bobby Collins was named Ben Jobe National Coach of the Year and MEAC Coach of the Year.

Between 2009 and 2014, Brantley invested a quinquennium promoting academic achievement via Equity Players, Inc., the Detroit Public Schools League (DPS), and the Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) by promoting positive behavior, Michigan Merit, Dual Enrollment, and Scholar-Athlete Development as a guest teacher, assistant head coach, and truancy officer. His efforts led to the revival of three (3) DPS boys’ basketball programs, including two state championship-caliber teams, while earning his Master of Science degree in sport management from West Virginia University. Before his work within the Michigan Department of Education, he was an assistant men's basketball coach at NCAA Division II Tiffin University (2008–09), which played in the GLIAC – the strongest conference in the country – with Findlay ranked No. 1 and Grand Valley State ranked No. 5–10.

A FIBA-certified coach, he has had experience with USA Basketball via the 2007 FIBA Americas Championship, the American Basketball Association as Norfolk Navigators assistant general manager (2005-08), and the National Basketball Association with the Orlando Magic (2004-05). Brantley completed an internship at Palace Sports & Entertainment, which won championships in three different professional sports leagues during the 2003-04 season via the NBA Detroit Pistons, NHL Tampa Bay Lightning, and WNBA Detroit Shock, as he earned the Hampton University Bachelor of Science degree in sport management. He began his professional sports career as an accounting and finance intern for the Detroit Tigers and Comerica Park (2001).

Every April, he returns to the Hampton Roads area for the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament and our “Home by the Sea” to impart insight to students seeking to gain experience in the sport management industry.


Posted By: A. P. Brantley
Tuesday, September 24th 2024 at 3:29AM
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